Stefanidaki Katerina

Katerina Stefanidaki (b. 1980, Athens) has studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and her artwork comprises large scale drawings, installations and outdoor interventions.

She presented her first solo show at the Zoumboulakis Gallery in Athens (2008), which included two large constructions/drawings (dimensions: 300cm x 1050cm and 300cm x 1150cm).
These works are consisted of a series of smaller drawings (charcoal on paper), attached on a wooden structure and depicting accordingly a 360-degree panoramic image of the Stefanidaki’s studio and the related view of Patission Street. This way, the artist/viewer stayed immobilized, while in the exhibition’s space the visitors staring at the drawings of the apartment or the view from the balcony completed the final images of two artworks.

Her next solo show (“This is the Place, Gentlemen!”, Zoumboulakis Gallery, 2015) was an installation developing the same topic and expanding over the whole exhibition space. Using the same materials (charcoal, paper and wooden structure), Stefanidaki creates an environment that falls apart. Fragments of the buildings seem to float, while the surfaces of the drawings allow the visitors to walk through the collapsed urbanscape.

During the next two years, the artist works on the same subject of a fragmented environment – a frozen explosion that was the theme of the installation with the title “Mine”. Part of this work in progress was presented at the show “Pause” (Zoumboulakis Gallery, 2017), one of the various group exhibitions Stefanidaki has participated in. From 2014 to 2016, Stefanidaki works on the outdoor project called “Buried Building” in Istiaia, Euboea.

She is able to create large-scale interventions, using rocks, plants, wooden 2 planks, soil or concrete. Imitating the surrounding landscape, the result is an artificial hill or other reduced versions of details of Istiaia’s natural environment.

Another dimension of Katerina Stefanidaki’s work is the design and materialization of a series of movable display cases. She presents them as parts of her own installations or vessels hosting other artists’ works (such as “The Procession”, Zafos Xagoraris, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019). These objects are made by the materials that the artist uses and could be easily dismantled and reassembled.

Together with Xagoraris, Stefanidaki has designed two toolboxes containing wooden letters and related molds that could be used by children during workshops (“Temporary Inscriptions”, Onassis Education, Athens, 2017-18, “Constructing Public Sentences”, ACC Galerie, Weimar, 2021- 22). Several writers have elaborated into her drawings and installations (K. Gouzelis, T. Tramboulis and others), while her full artwork has been presented at the University of Michigan, during one of the courses of the Professor Jim Cogswell (Ann Arbor, 2018).